By RUSSELL BENNETT
PAKENHAM 19-year-old John King was at Pakenham’s Voyage Fitness just a few short weeks ago when he saw something on the TV that rocked him to his core.
The deadly fires in Arizona hit home hard for Australians who have had more experience with traumatic fires than they would wish.
But when John got home and his mum told him that the town of Prescott was the epicentre of the US blaze, he was gobsmacked.
In February, he received a baseball scholarship to attend Prescott’s Yavapai college and play for the town’s heart and soul – the Roughriders baseball team.
It’s a world away from when John, as “a six or seven-year-old” (he can’t exactly remember), signed up to play with the Berwick Cougars after seeing an advertisement in the Pakenham Gazette.
He has since played for countless representatives – most as a “bottom-ager” – and made Victorian state teams in each of the past eight years.
His appetite for international baseball was whetted when he toured Japan with a Victorian team before he even entered his teenage years.
But his dream of playing professionally in some of the world’s most famous ball-parks very nearly came crashing down last year when the then St Francis Xavier sports captain broke his collarbone while kicking the footy with a mate.
“I didn’t think I was going to be able to come back from it,” he said.
“But I decided to have surgery and it was the best decision I could have made.
“I found the best sports surgeon I could and had a plate, six screws and two pins put in the shoulder of my throwing arm.
“If I dislocated my shoulder (instead), the fibres in my muscles would have been gone and I could have had rotator cuff problems.
“That would have been it – I could have been in real trouble, but I was just lucky.”
Still, he missed all but 10 of the 33 games Victorian summer baseball season. His college prospects took a big hit.
But such is his natural ability, he scrounged enough video footage out those 10 games to send to US colleges in the hope of one answering his call.
Yavapai did, since accepting John into their two-year program after taking a particular interest in his all-around game.
He’ll head to America in a couple of short weeks for a two-year stint as a catcher and second baseman.
He has never been to America, he’ll be far away from his parents and his baby sister, and he doesn’t know anyone on the Prescott campus.
But he knows that he’ll stand on a float travelling through the main street of town in in their Christmas parade.
His Roughriders shirt for the first game of the new college season will feature an emblem honouring the 19 people that lost their lives in the Prescott blaze.
John knows that the town and its beloved ball team can’t be separated.
In two years, the potential for an NCAA (college), or even professional career, awaits.
But he isn’t getting ahead of himself.
John was accepted into Deakin University this year to study business before deferring to follow his American dream.
In fact, the ability to continue with his business studies at Yavapai helped make his decision to attend an even easier one. Not a bad role model.
For John, setting himself up for life after baseball is almost, if not, as important as the sport itself.
John’s first college season begins early in the new year for a Roughriders team that once boasted now three-time MLB World Series champion, and six-time all-star Curt Schilling.
